


Garden of Bellflowers

by Fweeble



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Day 4, F/F, Tokyo Ghoul Week, character introspection, spoilers up to Anteiku raid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 21:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2444354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fweeble/pseuds/Fweeble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If life as a ghoul could be compared to living a life in a post-apocalyptic world, Yoriko would be Touka’s lone flower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Garden of Bellflowers

**Author's Note:**

> Empress: fave female character/beauty, nature, abundance
> 
> Thank you homonyanko for once again beta'ing the mess I presented you! All mistakes you still see are due to my own error. ; u;

If life as a ghoul could be compared to living a life in a post-apocalyptic world, Yoriko would be Touka’s lone flower. In a wasteland barren of life, among the skeletons of buildings that once stood and the charred carcasses of trees, she would be the wildflower that bloomed in the shattered remains of concrete. She would thrive, grow towards the light through the cracks of what used to be, a symbol of hope and better things to come.   
  
But that flower could be trampled. All it would take is a step, an unthinking fool who would trample this delicate miracle beneath the heel of their boot. All it takes is an idiot to destroy everything. All it takes is one mistake.  
  
So she shelters her miracle with hands of blood, with a wing of destruction and heart of steel. It doesn’t matter if she stains herself with so much darkness she can never touch her treasure, her most cherished person, as long as Yoriko continues to exist, as long as Touka can stay by her side, take part in some of that wonder, that is all Touka needs.   
  
She will throw away everything else, allow everything around her to perish, fall to ashes, if it means her flower continues to live in the light, where she belongs.  
  
For Yoriko, Touka will become anything.   
  
\--  
  
“How beautiful,” the human breathes and Touka falters, feels the hairline cracks that spread throughout her, ripples in once still waters. She can’t allow herself to waver, but she hears the fool’s voice ringing in her head.  
  
 _“That person… is probably like Hide is to me, or how Yoriko-chan is to you.”  
_  
She wants to punch his phantom, wants to tear, dismantle him piece by piece as she screams this is for  _Yoriko_ , everything she does is  _for Yoriko_. That this is how willing she is to sacrifice  _everything_  for Yoriko, how this is proof of how much Yoriko  _means_  to her. She won’t lose Yoriko, she won’t lose her place by Yoriko’s side. Not for anything.  
  
But the human’s words pierce her, and the cracks show. She can see it in Nishio’s eyes, in the hitch of Kaneki’s breathing.   
  
So she flees.  
  
She takes refuge on the church roof, tries to collect the pieces of her that have chipped and fallen, tries to glue them back together. Tries to remember –Yoriko, everything is so she can stay by Yoriko. But she hears the human woman, hears her voice, feels her words wrap around her, and feels them gently pry the brittle bits of her that are loose, weak. She can feel herself fragmenting, falling, dissolving, and she tries desperately to remember herself. She feels like water, amorphous and aimless.  
  
She has to kill that woman if she wishes to stay by Yoriko’s side, if she wishes to bask in the same light as Yoriko, and yet…  
  
Touka buries her face in her knees, resists the beads of water that threaten to overflow, because…  
  
“…This is beautiful…?”  
  
How many nightmares has she woken from, terrified and anxious? How many times in her dreams has Yoriko seen her, mouth bloodied, hands soaked, kagune flared behind her? How many times has this Yoriko cried in despair, anger, betrayal? How many times has Touka awakened to her heart shattered across her sheets?  
  
How often has she imagined Yoriko smiling at her, arms open, saying the words that human woman said?  
  
\--  
  
Everything changes, everyone is different –will Yoriko change, too?  
  
What happened to the foolish, bumbling boy of a man that she used to work with? What happened to the shy sweet smiles, the hesitant, unsure way he held himself? Who was the man who calmly spoke of  _pulling weeds_? Kaneki, who, when faced with the imminent murder of Ryouko, could only stand there and watch? Kaneki, who could not fight, who stumbled over his own feet as he dodged and weaved, sought battle?  
  
Ayato had changed, too.   
  
The little boy who was too afraid to touch worms is gone. A stranger who wears his face is all that remains. Her brother is lost to her and she understands that, has accepted it long ago.  
  
Now, she thinks, she has lost Kaneki.  
  
Kaneki, who should have never mattered, but does.  
  
Even if Kaneki doesn’t return, Touka has Yoriko, and that is all that matters. She tells herself this as she throws herself back into her studies, into her life in the light. She won’t lose sight of what is important.  
  
Yoriko.  
  
She has everything she needs, with or without Kaneki Ken or Kirishima Ayato.  
  
Touka tells herself what she feels isn’t regret and loss.  
  
\--  
  
Yomo looms over her, an envoy of the end, and Touka refuses to accept his words.   
  
If Anteiku disappears her days in the sun are over. Her days with Yoriko under blue, infinite skies are over. She will return to the darkness, the barren and unforgiving world of the ghouls.  
  
Her days perfecting the craft, studiously pouring steaming water over ground beans under the Manager’s gentle tutelage are over. Her days gossiping with Irimi, of sharing her small joys, her little frustrations, are over. Her days of playful exasperation with Koma and his terrible jokes are over. Her peaceful days where she allowed her irritation to bubble over, scorch the naïve Kaneki, are over.   
  
Everything is over, will be over, forever, and Touka realizes that Yoriko wasn’t her only flower in the dead and decaying world she lives in. She had been blessed, blessed for so long with such beauty and she had failed to recognize it, failed to appreciate their splendor. She failed to properly safeguard them and now she will lose them in the angry waves of the CCG. She will lose everything.  
  
She will die for them, is willing to sacrifice to protect these important, delicate gifts, but Yomo is an obstacle she cannot surmount, a guardian deity securing the gates to hell.   
  
 _“Your ‘wing’ isn’t able to fly anywhere.”_  
  
In the end, she will lose everything –again. Again, again, again. She is tired, so tired of losing everything, has had enough of watch everything turn to dust in her hands, of clinging as everything slips between her fingers. She wants to fight, wants to struggle, wants to release her desperation; even if it is futile, even if it will only lead to her death, she wants it to be on her terms.  
  
Always, always, she had been aimless, unable to do anything because she didn’t know anything else.   
  
She wants to go to them, to honor and protect them at least in death if not in life, wants to fly there on her broken wing and spite Ayato. If nothing else, she can die by their side, where she belongs.  
  
“We can only live while we lose,” Yomo murmurs gently and he strokes her hair and Touka lets her rage and frustration flow, feels the trail they burn down her cheeks, tastes them on her tongue. She curls her fingers into Yomo’s jacket, cries her grief for everything she has lost, is losing, will lose again. She cries for the mother she never knew, the father she never forgot, the brother she never found.  
  
She cries for the home she is letting go, the family she leaves to perish. The love she will never see again.  
  
 _I’m sorry, Yoriko. I can never go to the zoo or eat with you under the sun again._  
  



End file.
